TY - JOUR
T1 - Learning to be thoughtless
T2 - Social norms and individual computation
AU - Epstein, Joshua M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Source of Funding: The medication therapy management services project was supported by a grant funded by the Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA); contract number MED130. This manuscript was not funded, is solely the responsibility of the authors, and does not represent the official views of the AHCA.
PY - 2001/8
Y1 - 2001/8
N2 - This paper extends the literature on the evolution of norms with an agent-based model capturing a phenomenon that has been essentially ignored, namely that individual thought - or computing - is often inversely related to the strength of a social norm. Once a norm is entrenched, we conform thoughtlessly. In this model, agents learn how to behave (what norm to adopt), but - under a strategy I term Best Reply to Adaptive Sample Evidence - they also learn how much to think about how to behave. How much they are thinking affects how they behave, which - given how others behave - affects how much they think. In short, there is feedback between the social (inter-agent) and internal (intra-agent) dynamics. In addition, we generate the stylized facts regarding the spatio-temporal evolution of norms: local conformity, global diversity, and punctuated equilibria.
AB - This paper extends the literature on the evolution of norms with an agent-based model capturing a phenomenon that has been essentially ignored, namely that individual thought - or computing - is often inversely related to the strength of a social norm. Once a norm is entrenched, we conform thoughtlessly. In this model, agents learn how to behave (what norm to adopt), but - under a strategy I term Best Reply to Adaptive Sample Evidence - they also learn how much to think about how to behave. How much they are thinking affects how they behave, which - given how others behave - affects how much they think. In short, there is feedback between the social (inter-agent) and internal (intra-agent) dynamics. In addition, we generate the stylized facts regarding the spatio-temporal evolution of norms: local conformity, global diversity, and punctuated equilibria.
KW - Agent-based computational economics
KW - Evolution of norms
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U2 - 10.1023/A:1013810410243
DO - 10.1023/A:1013810410243
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0035435850
SN - 0927-7099
VL - 18
SP - 9
EP - 24
JO - Computational Economics
JF - Computational Economics
IS - 1
ER -